May 6, 2008 at 10:13 am by ashish · Filed under Visual Applications, Enterprise Mashups, REST, Ajax, Cool Stuff, Form Talk
In my previous article, I showed an example of a frevvo form working with a Google spreadsheet. That form populates automatically with data from the spreadsheet and updates it.
frevvo forms can also simultaneously update multiple spreadsheets. Here’s an example frevvo form (will open in a new window and it’s just embedded in an empty page) that interacts with multiple sheets. It’s linked to this Google spreadsheet (will open in a new window).
Fill out the form, click Submit and you’ll see that the entries get added to the two different worksheets on the above spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is instantly updated though it might take a few minutes to see the changes in the link above – Google Docs only publishes updates every 5 minutes.
Couple of notes re: the form itself
- The form uses a Tabbed View and a two-column layout in the first Tab.
- You can add multiple email addresses. Click the + icon next to the email to add more than one email address.
- On the Survey tab, there is a simple Business Rule. Select Yes to the Microsoft Office question and you’ll see that a conditional question pops up below.
These are some simple examples of the powerful capabilities of Live Forms. You can easily create sophisticated forms with these kinds of capabilities. Check out this 10-minute video, try frevvo for free (even without signing up) at our web site, contact us for more information and check out our Partner Programs if you’re interested in an OEM version of frevvo.
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April 30, 2008 at 9:22 pm by ashish · Filed under Enterprise Mashups, REST, Ajax, Cool Stuff, Form Talk
In my previous post, I showed an example of using a Google Document for rich email formatting. frevvo forms also work with Google Spreadsheets.
Here’s an example frevvo form (will open in a new window and it’s just embedded in an empty page) that pre-populates from a Google spreadsheet and updates the spreadsheet when submitted. The form is linked to this Google Spreadsheet (will open in a new window).
Select a Last Name from the drop down list at the top of the form. You’ll see that the controls below automatically populate with data from the spreadsheet for the person you chose. If you select a different person from the drop down, the controls will update. Make some changes (note that the Last Name field is not editable) and Submit the form. The spreadsheet is instantly updated though it might take a few minutes to see the changes in the link above – Google Docs only publishes updates every 5 minutes.
This is just one example of the mashups you can create with frevvo forms and external applications. We’ve put a lot of thought and effort into not just forms and a slick user interface but into how you can use forms. The integration possibilities are endless because of the many flexible data-management options offered by frevvo Live Forms.
If you find this interesting, check out this 10-minute video, try frevvo for free (even without signing up) at our web site, contact us for more information and check out our Partner Programs if you’re interested in an OEM version of frevvo.
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April 29, 2008 at 10:42 am by ashish · Filed under Enterprise Mashups, Visual Applications, Ajax
A few days back, I was talking to an executive from a leading Enterprise Social Software company about partnering with frevvo. His observation was that these tools and their collaboration capabilities lived in the space between completely unstructured workflows at companies (typically via email) to rigid workflows created by IT using workflow products.
This got me thinking – what keeps the CIO awake at night? It’s not the database or servers – they cost a lot but they’re known entities. It’s not the client – pick a browser and an OS. It’s what’s in the middle – from short-lived apps put together by power users (register for the corporate outing, get results by email or in Excel) to significant projects developed by IT (order management app that works with the SOA or back end server). In either case, this is the unpredictable part in terms of $ as well as time. A lot of expensive, time-consuming and unproductive work lives here. There’s often a huge backlog of these types of short-lived needs that IT simply cannot fulfill – and in many cases, the need is gone before IT gets around to implementing it.
That’s where Enterprise Wikis can add value. They allow IT to retain control of the server infrastructure while still allowing business people (those same power users that have written millions of Excel macros) to put together simple, short-lived applications and deploy them quickly. Most people call them Enterprise Mashups. IBM has a new term that I like – Situational Applications.
“Situational applications are a way for people with domain expertise to create applications in a very short time. Many IT shops have a backlog of small little projects that their customers want. If it takes 3 weeks to get to a project, the need is gone before the developer even starts coding. We want to give knowledge workers the tools to solve their own problems.”
So, how can IT be the gatekeeper but not the gardener? Enterprise Wiki software provides widgets that business users can assemble into applications while still allowing IT to control the widgets and the services that the widgets consume. Of course, web forms are a key aspect of Situational Applications. The vast majority of business applications rely on forms. So, a simple web-based form builder must by definition be at the heart of any Enterprise Wiki or it won’t be able to handle most business applications. In fact, they’re so important that IBM itself has an initiative called TotalForms.
If you’re thinking of implementing an Enterprise Wiki, take a look at frevvo Live Forms and this 10-minute video. You can try frevvo for free (even without signing up) at our web site, contact us for more information and check out our Partner Programs if you’re interested in an OEM version of frevvo.
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April 28, 2008 at 5:15 pm by ashish · Filed under REST, Ajax, Cool Stuff, Form Talk
In my previous post, I talked about using a Google Document as a template for formatted HTML email. I created an example frevvo form (will open in a new window and it’s just embedded in an empty page) that does exactly that.
I am using this Google Document (will open in a new window) as an email template. Fill in the fields in the form, make sure you enter the correct email address and Submit it. You’ll see that the values you enter in the form are used to process the Google Document template and you’ll get a formatted email with the resulting information.
This is just one of the ways to use frevvo forms with Google Apps. I’m working on a couple of examples that use Spreadsheets and will post them here shortly.
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April 28, 2008 at 3:33 pm by ashish · Filed under Enterprise Mashups, REST, Ajax, Cool Stuff, Form Talk
I’ve been playing with frevvo forms and interactions with various Google Apps components:
- frevvo forms updating one or more spreadsheets (similar to Google’s own forms)
- frevvo forms using Google Documents for email formatting.
- frevvo forms pre-populating from a Google Spreadsheet and updating data.
- inserting frevvo forms into Google Sites.
- using frevvo forms with Google Page Creator.
It turns out that frevvo forms work really well with Google Docs. frevvo forms can interact with Google Spreadsheets: they can simultaneously update multiple worksheets in a single spreadsheet or across spreadsheets. Of course, the form can update a spreadsheet, send an email and communicate via XML to a back end server application if necessary.
frevvo forms can also automatically update data in a Google Spreadsheet. You can initialize a form with data from the spreadsheet, edit it and update the relevant row.
frevvo forms can interact with Documents – I created an example that uses a Google Document as a template to format an email sent by a frevvo form. It is also possible to create a new formatted Document from a submission.
I’ll post some example forms and links in separate articles but it sure looks like frevvo forms are a very easy-to-use and very powerful front end for Google Apps.
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April 14, 2008 at 6:10 am by ashish · Filed under SOA, Visual Applications, REST, Architecture, Ajax, Form Talk
I came across this interesting press release from IBM at their recent IMPACT conference.
With diverse data sources and inefficient, time consuming processes needed to turn data into useful information, more companies are turning to web-based forms. In response, IBM announced today a new lightweight entry-level product code-named “TotalForms” which the company plans to ship in beta in June.
“TotalForms” is an easy-to-use version of IBM’s Lotus Forms software that will enable nontechnical people to quickly create, publish and route electronic forms submitted via the web. It can be used for a variety of tasks including customer satisfaction surveys, job applications and product orders. Based on an open and scalable nonproprietary software platform and Web 2.0 technology, “TotalForms” will integrate with IBM WebSphere Portal to provide one familiar interface for customers.
Lastly, IBM announced today that the company’s current forms product, IBM Lotus Forms 3.0.1, now includes out-of-the-box integration with IBM Filenet F8 software. It already provided tight integration with IBM WebSphere Process Server and IBM WebSphere Integration Developer software.
There’s also a demo screenshow of TotalForms (click on Play Media). Compare this with frevvo’s quick tour video.
It seems to me that the biggest player in the SOA/BPM space is affirming the need for a product such as Live Forms in conjunction with SOA/BPM products. Live Forms is far, far ahead - we have a more complete product with far superior capabilities and we’ve had a production version for almost a year now. You can try frevvo for free (even without signing up) at our web site, contact us for more information and check out our Partner Programs if you’re interested in an OEM version of frevvo.
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November 19, 2007 at 5:00 pm by nancy · Filed under News
New features, enhancements, fixes galore!!! Lots of customer driven requirements which is always very gratifying to be responding to your requests on features that are making a difference in your form projects.
It’s been a while since the last Release Info posting. Here is a partial list of what has been added.
We’ve made it easier to communicate with us:
- If you have Skype, you can contact the frevvo help desk at any time. Just click on the link on our web site.
- Contact our help desk through our Chatroom.
We’ve added video tutorials:
- You can view a 10 minute quick tour video of some of Live Forms’ capabilities for creating sophisticated business forms.
- We’ve added several help pages that include links to videos, documentation, blog articles and example forms. Simply select a feature from the list in the right column of our web site to see the relevant help page. See the Form Designer help page for an example.
We’ve added many new features:
- Date Picker pop on date controls makes it easy for users to select dates.
- Control types can be changed easily from dropdown to radio to checkbox. Also types can be changed between date, text, number etc…
- Rules can be written to execute after the form loads with initial form data from your backend
- It’s now easier to connect your frevvo forms to read/write to you database.
- All forms now contain a print icon which creates a printable view of your form
- When custom print views are required, frevvo now supports an easy services that enables simplified xpath access to your submitted form data.
- Accessing a form instance URL of a form enables users to collaboratively fill in forms. However if one user submits the form, the other users were getting 404 page not found errors. frevvo now warns the other users that the form has been submitted and will load a new form on request.
For a detailed list of new features, enhancements and bug fixes, please refer to the online documentation.
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November 16, 2007 at 10:29 am by ashish · Filed under Visual Applications, Ajax, Form Talk
One of the most important things frevvo’s all about is enhancing the user’s experience. Recently, we’ve built some very large and complex forms with hundreds of controls, initialization data coming from multiple databases and a large number of business rules. Sometimes, especially on slower client machines [using IE6], the form would take a very long time to load.
So, we decided to implement an asynchronous solution based on a server-side cache. Now, the form will be created and the server will send XHTML to the browser immediately. All database initialization, onLoad business rules etc. are handled asynchronously on the server. The browser on getting the XHTML uses Ajax to get the necessary state information from the server but while it’s doing so, the user is given visual feedback that the form is initializing.
Our client loved this visual feedback and we thought it really improved the user experience as well. I’d love to know what you think so I created an example. This form isn’t all that large but initializes from a database. I have intentionally placed a 15 second delay in the initialization to simulate a form that takes a [relatively] long time to initialize. You can try the example by clicking on this link. We’re finding that raw performance is far less important than this kind of visual feedback. What do you think?
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October 10, 2007 at 4:47 pm by ashish · Filed under Visual Applications, SOA, Architecture, Ajax
Today, I came across this article that talks about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) being stuck with complex tools.
At frevvo, we think that this is particularly problematic for rich user interfaces. Ajax-based user interfaces that provide a rich user experience in the browser are not really optional anymore. People are used to seeing rich behavior in consumer applications and have similar expectations of corporate applications.
For companies, their applications must interact with databases, SOA etc. Most of the time this is a bunch of forms in a browser performing operations on back end documents & services. As the article implies, there just aren’t enough skilled developers at most organizations that can create forms with rich, dynamic behavior in a web browser (one example of a skill set that is hard to find). That’s where frevvo Live Forms comes in. Live Forms takes care of most of these issues - it’s really easy using Live Forms to create sophisticated forms with fancy layouts and rich behavior (instant validation, dynamic controls …) but equally important, it’s very easy to integrate these forms with your databases, SOA and other back end server applications. And, it doesn’t take deep knowledge of Ajax, browser incompatibilities, JavaScript etc. to deliver this kind of rich functionality using frevvo.
It’s fast, easy and free to try out frevvo. Just sign up for the SaaS version where we host everything and all you need is a browser. If you prefer to download frevvo and try it in your environment, sign up for the in-house version. There’s a convenient Tomcat bundle that you can download and install very quickly. Check out the help page with a video, documentation etc. We’d love to get your thoughts/feedback.
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October 10, 2007 at 1:50 pm by ashish · Filed under Enterprise Mashups, Visual Applications, Ajax
I came across several posts referencing Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008 including this one.
Mashup & Composite Apps. By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of composite enterprise applications. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy.
Web Platform & WOA. Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010. Meanwhile Web platforms are emerging which provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through Web based “cloud computing” environments. Companies must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.
These points talk directly to frevvo’s value proposition. It’s too hard for most developers to create rich, Ajax-based user interfaces. We’ve talked about Enterprise mashups, REST and WOA before.
frevvo Live Forms makes it simple to create a rich UI by wiring up parts of your WOA and offers all this in a SaaS model where you use nothing but your web browser. frevvo is perfectly complementary to WOA - uses HTTP, POX and JSON - yet provides capabilities and features that rival far more expensive and complex products such as Microsoft InfoPath. Check out this comparison with InfoPath for more information.
Try frevvo out – it’s fast, easy and free to try. Just Sign Up on our web site and give it a whirl. We’d love to get your feedback.
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